W. W. Norton
Encyclopedia
W. W. Norton & Company is an independent American book publishing company based in New York City
. It is well known for its "Norton Anthologies", particularly the Norton Anthology of English Literature
and the "Norton Critical Editions" series of texts which are frequently assigned in university literature courses.
publisher in the United States, for fiction, nonfiction, poetry, college textbooks, cookbooks, art books, and professional books. The roots of the company date back to 1923. Since the 1950s, Norton's college textbook line has expanded to include leading titles in economics
, government
, history
, music
, psychology
, political science
, sociology
, and many other academic subjects. Several of their college textbooks, including The Norton Shakespeare, The Enjoyment of Music, A History of Western Music, and new and revised entries in the Norton Anthology and Norton Critical Edition series, have become bestsellers in the academic fields. The Norton Professional Books division was founded in 1985 with a line of psychotherapy volumes, expanding to include neuroscience, education, architecture and design books.
Norton acquired Liveright (the successor to the famous Boni & Liveright publishing house) in 1974, and Countryman Press (New England travel book publisher) in 1996.
by Vincent Bugliosi
and Curt Gentry; Jared Diamond
’s Pulitzer Prize
-winning best-seller Guns, Germs, and Steel
; Pulitzer prize
-winning historians Annette Gordon-Reed
and Edmund S. Morgan's works', Patrick O'Brian
’s critically acclaimed naval adventures; the works of National Book Award-winning fiction author Andrea Barrett
; "Khruschev: The Man and His Era" by William Taubman, "Hitler: Hubris" and "Hitler: Nemesis" by Ian Kershaw, Liar's Poker
, Moneyball, The Blind Side
and The Big Short
by Michael Lewis
; Fareed Zakaria
’s The Future of Freedom
; Sebastian Junger
’s The Perfect Storm; Sam Harris
’s The End of Faith
; The Death of Vishnu
by Manil Suri
; A Clockwork Orange
by Anthony Burgess
; The Red Book
by Carl Jung
; The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb, and others in several subject fields. In the social sciences
and science
, Norton has published bestselling books by such authors as economist
s Paul Krugman
and Joseph Stiglitz, paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould
, physicist
Richard Feynman
, and historian
s Peter Gay
, Jonathan Spence
, Eric Foner
, Christopher Lasch
, and George F. Kennan
.
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. It is well known for its "Norton Anthologies", particularly the Norton Anthology of English Literature
Norton Anthology of English Literature
The Norton Anthology of English Literature is an anthology of English literature published by the W. W. Norton & Company. It has gone through eight editions since its inception in 1962; it is the publisher's best-selling anthology, with some eight million copies in print. The influential critic...
and the "Norton Critical Editions" series of texts which are frequently assigned in university literature courses.
History
W. W. Norton & Company is the largest American book publishing company that has remained independent since its founding. It is the oldest and largest employee-ownedEmployee-owned corporation
An employee share ownership plan is the practice of companies giving staff members shares in their company as part of their salary....
publisher in the United States, for fiction, nonfiction, poetry, college textbooks, cookbooks, art books, and professional books. The roots of the company date back to 1923. Since the 1950s, Norton's college textbook line has expanded to include leading titles in economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
, government
Government
Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...
, history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
, music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
, psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
, political science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
, sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
, and many other academic subjects. Several of their college textbooks, including The Norton Shakespeare, The Enjoyment of Music, A History of Western Music, and new and revised entries in the Norton Anthology and Norton Critical Edition series, have become bestsellers in the academic fields. The Norton Professional Books division was founded in 1985 with a line of psychotherapy volumes, expanding to include neuroscience, education, architecture and design books.
Norton acquired Liveright (the successor to the famous Boni & Liveright publishing house) in 1974, and Countryman Press (New England travel book publisher) in 1996.
Board of directors
- W. Drake McFeely, Chairman and President of W. W. Norton, has been a member of Norton's Board of Directors since 1990 and its Chairman since 2000.
Bestsellers
Norton's best-selling trade books include the following titles: Helter SkelterHelter Skelter (book)
Helter Skelter is a true crime book by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry. The subject of the book is the 1969 Manson Family murders and Bugliosi's own prosecution of Charles Manson and his followers....
by Vincent Bugliosi
Vincent Bugliosi
Vincent Bugliosi is an American attorney and author, best known for prosecuting Charles Manson and other defendants accused of the Tate-LaBianca murders. His most recent books are Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy , The Prosecution of George W...
and Curt Gentry; Jared Diamond
Jared Diamond
Jared Mason Diamond is an American scientist and author whose work draws from a variety of fields. He is currently Professor of Geography and Physiology at UCLA...
’s Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
-winning best-seller Guns, Germs, and Steel
Guns, Germs, and Steel
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies is a 1997 book by Jared Diamond, professor of geography and physiology at the University of California, Los Angeles . In 1998 it won the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction and the Aventis Prize for Best Science Book...
; Pulitzer prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
-winning historians Annette Gordon-Reed
Annette Gordon-Reed
Annette Gordon-Reed is an American historian and law professor noted for changing scholarship on Thomas Jefferson. Gordon-Reed was educated at Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School. She is Professor of Law and History at Harvard, and the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe...
and Edmund S. Morgan's works', Patrick O'Brian
Patrick O'Brian
Patrick O'Brian, CBE , born Richard Patrick Russ, was an English novelist and translator, best known for his Aubrey–Maturin series of novels set in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars and centred on the friendship of English Naval Captain Jack Aubrey and the Irish–Catalan physician Stephen...
’s critically acclaimed naval adventures; the works of National Book Award-winning fiction author Andrea Barrett
Andrea Barrett
Andrea Barrett is an American novelist, and short story writer. Her Ship Fever collection of novella and short stories won the National Book Award in 1996...
; "Khruschev: The Man and His Era" by William Taubman, "Hitler: Hubris" and "Hitler: Nemesis" by Ian Kershaw, Liar's Poker
Liar's Poker
Liar's Poker is a non-fiction, semi-autobiographical book by Michael Lewis describing the author's experiences as a bond salesman on Wall Street during the late 1980s...
, Moneyball, The Blind Side
The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game
The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game is a book by Michael Lewis released in 2006 about American football.-Plot:It features two dominant storylines...
and The Big Short
The Big Short
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine is a 2010 non-fiction book by Michael Lewis about the build-up of the housing and credit bubble during the 2000s...
by Michael Lewis
Michael Lewis (author)
Michael Lewis is an American non-fiction author and financial journalist. His bestselling books include The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, Liar's Poker, The New New Thing, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game, Panic and Home Game: An...
; Fareed Zakaria
Fareed Zakaria
Fareed Rafiq Zakaria is an Indian-American journalist and author. From 2000 to 2010, he was a columnist for Newsweek and editor of Newsweek International. In 2010 he became Editor-At-Large of Time magazine...
’s The Future of Freedom
The Future of Freedom
The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad is a book by Fareed Zakaria analyzing the variables that allow a liberal democracy to flourish and the pros and cons of the global focus on democracy as the building block of a more stable society rather than liberty. It was a...
; Sebastian Junger
Sebastian Junger
Sebastian Junger is an American author, journalist and documentarian, most famous for the best-selling book The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea, his award-winning chronicle of the war in Afghanistan in the 2010 movie Restrepo, and his 2010 book War.-Background:Junger was born...
’s The Perfect Storm; Sam Harris
Sam Harris (author)
Sam Harris is an American author, and neuroscientist, as well as the co-founder and current CEO of Project Reason. He received a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from Stanford University, before receiving a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA...
’s The End of Faith
The End of Faith
The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason is a book written by Sam Harris, concerning organized religion, the clash between religious faith and rational thought, and the problems of tolerance towards religious fundamentalism....
; The Death of Vishnu
The Death of Vishnu
The Death of Vishnu is a novel by Indian-American writer Manil Suri. The book is about the spiritual journey of a dying man named Vishnu living on a landing of a Bombay apartment building, as well as the lives of the residents living in the building. The novel was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner...
by Manil Suri
Manil Suri
Manil Suri is an Indian-American mathematician and writer, most notable for his first novel, The Death of Vishnu, which was long-listed for the 2001 Booker Prize, short-listed for the 2002 PEN/Faulkner Award and won the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize that year...
; A Clockwork Orange
A Clockwork Orange
A Clockwork Orange is a 1962 dystopian novella by Anthony Burgess. The novel contains an experiment in language: the characters often use an argot called "Nadsat", derived from Russian....
by Anthony Burgess
Anthony Burgess
John Burgess Wilson – who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess – was an English author, poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic. The dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange is Burgess's most famous novel, though he dismissed it as one of his lesser works...
; The Red Book
Red Book (Jung)
The Red Book, also known as Liber Novus , is a 205-page manuscript written and illustrated by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung between approximately 1914 and 1930, prepared for publication by The Philemon Foundation and published by W.W. Norton & Co. on October 7, 2009...
by Carl Jung
Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...
; The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb, and others in several subject fields. In the social sciences
Social sciences
Social science is the field of study concerned with society. "Social science" is commonly used as an umbrella term to refer to a plurality of fields outside of the natural sciences usually exclusive of the administrative or managerial sciences...
and science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
, Norton has published bestselling books by such authors as economist
Economist
An economist is a professional in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy...
s Paul Krugman
Paul Krugman
Paul Robin Krugman is an American economist, professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, Centenary Professor at the London School of Economics, and an op-ed columnist for The New York Times...
and Joseph Stiglitz, paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was also one of the most influential and widely read writers of popular science of his generation....
, physicist
Physicist
A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
Richard Feynman
Richard Feynman
Richard Phillips Feynman was an American physicist known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics...
, and historian
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
s Peter Gay
Peter Gay
Peter Gay is Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University and former director of the New York Public Library's Center for Scholars and Writers . Gay received the American Historical Association's Award for Scholarly Distinction in 2004...
, Jonathan Spence
Jonathan Spence
Jonathan D. Spence is a British-born historian and public intellectual specializing in Chinese history. He was Sterling Professor of History at Yale University from 1993 to 2008. His most famous book is The Search for Modern China, which has become one of the standard texts on the last several...
, Eric Foner
Eric Foner
Eric Foner is an American historian. On the faculty of the Department of History at Columbia University since 1982, he writes extensively on political history, the history of freedom, the early history of the Republican Party, African American biography, Reconstruction, and historiography...
, Christopher Lasch
Christopher Lasch
Christopher Lasch was a well-known American historian, moralist, and social critic....
, and George F. Kennan
George F. Kennan
George Frost Kennan was an American adviser, diplomat, political scientist and historian, best known as "the father of containment" and as a key figure in the emergence of the Cold War...
.
Distribution
Norton currently distributes books for several independent publishers, including:- Albatross BooksAlbatross BooksAlbatross Books was a German publishing house based in Hamburg that produced the first modern mass market paperback books.Albatross was founded in 1932 by John Holroyd-Reece, Max Wegner and Kurt Enoch. The name was chosen because "Albatross' is the same word in many European languages...
, sailing, photography, historical fiction and autographical works by Ferenc MátéFerenc MátéFerenc Máté escaped Hungary after the revolution with his mother to Vancouver, British Columbia. He has lived in British Columbia, California, New York, Paris, and Rome, and now resides on a wine estate in Tuscany with his wife, painter and winemaker Candace Máté, and their son, Peter...
, plus the annual Seven Seas calendar. - Atlas & Co., publisher of contemporary and historical fiction, non-fiction, history and biography.
- Blue GuidesBlue GuidesThe Blue Guides are a series of highly detailed and authoritative travel guidebooks focusing almost exclusively on art and architecture along with the history and context necessary to understand them...
, travel and cultural guide books in English. - CIRCCIRCCIRC is a four-letter acronym that may refer to:*China Insurance Regulatory Commission*Cross-interleaved Reed-Solomon coding*CIRC-FM, a radio station*Central Iowa Railway...
(Chess Information and Research Center), instructional books on chess written or co-written by chess grandmaster Lev AlburtLev AlburtLev Osipovich Alburt is a chess Grandmaster and a well-respected chess writer. He was three-time Ukrainian Champion, and after defecting to the United States in 1979, became three-time U.S. Champion.-Career:...
. - Coachbuilt Press, specialist publisher of high-end photography of historical automobiles.
- Countryman Press, acquired by Norton in 1996, is a publisher of travel guides, New England regional interest and history, and cookbooks.
- Dalkey Archive PressDalkey Archive PressDalkey Archive Press is a publisher of fiction, poetry, and literary criticism in Illinois in the United States, specializing in the publication or republication of lesser known, often avant-garde works...
, publisher of the Review of Contemporary Fiction and literature, memoirs, and criticism from around the globe. - Fantagraphics BooksFantagraphics BooksFantagraphics Books is an American publisher of alternative comics, classic comic strip anthologies, magazines, graphic novels, and the adult-oriented Eros Comix imprint...
, which publishes graphic fiction and comics. - George BrazillerGeorge BrazillerGeorge Braziller is an American book publisher and the founder of George Braziller, Inc., a firm known for its literary and artistic books and its publication of foreign authors....
Inc., publisher of art and photography books, poetry, literature and history. - Kales Press, publisher of nonfiction such as science, history, art, and memoir.
- New Directions Publishing, which focuses on publishing literature in translation, poetry, and recent classics.
- Odyssey Publications, Hong kong-based publisher of cultural travel guides and history/photo books on unusual and exotic locations around the world.
- Peace Hill PressPeace Hill PressPeace Hill Press is an American publishing company based in Charles City County, Virginia. Peace Hill Press publishes books that fit within the framework of the classical model of education...
, publisher of secular homeschooling books and supplemental materials on history, reading and religion. - Quantuck Lane Press, publisher of "beautiful books of photography, art, and the eccentric, whether illustrated or not."
- Rio Nuevo Publishers, specialist publishers of American Southwest history, travel, culture, art, and cooking.
- Pegasus Books, publishing non-fiction, history, health, biography and mystery titles.
- Persea Books, publisher of literature including fiction, poetry and memoir from the United States and around the world.
- Pushcart PressPushcart PressPushcart Press is a publishing house established in 1972 by Bill Henderson and is perhaps most famous for its Pushcart Prize and for the anthology of prize winners it publishes annually. The press has been honored by Publishers Weekly as one of the USA's "most influential publishers" with the 1979...
, publisher of the annual Pushcart PrizePushcart PrizeThe Pushcart Prize is an American literary prize by Pushcart Press that honors the best "poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot" published in the small presses over the previous year. Magazine and small book press editors are invited to nominate up to 6 works they have featured....
literary anthologies and other books of literature and memoir. - Skyhorse PublishingSkyhorse PublishingSkyhorse Publishing, Inc., known as Skyhorse Publishing, was founded in 2006 and is located in New York, NY. It is an American independent book publishing company, and is distributed by W. W. Norton & Company. The current president and publisher is founder Tony Lyons, who named it after Brando...
, books on sports, flyfishing, nature , history, narrative nonfiction, military history, gambling, business, and humor titles. - Thames & HudsonThames & HudsonThames & Hudson is a publisher of illustrated books on art, architecture, design, and visual culture. With its headquarters in London, England it has a sister company in New York and subsidiaries in Melbourne, Singapore and Hong Kong...
, a publisher of illustrated books in art, architecture, anthropology, fashion, graphic design, photography, and travel. - Verso BooksVerso BooksVerso Books is a publishing house based in London and New York City, founded in 1970 by the staff of New Left Review. The company claims "global sales approaching $3 million per year and over 350 titles in print," possibly making it "the largest radical publisher in the English-language...
, the self-described "largest radical publisher in the English-language world".
External links
- Official Homepage
- Making the Cut - Chronicle of Higher Education